Apple is placing a huge emphasis on accessibility features in its upcoming iOS 27 operating system for smartphones. Among these features is a remarkable one that will soon enable iPhones to automatically generate subtitles for users’ personal videos, a feature the company officially confirmed in a press release a few days ago.
This move comes as Apple is pushing hard to develop its own artificial intelligence system, Apple Intelligence, in iOS 27, aiming to close the gap with competitors, most notably Samsung’s Galaxy AI and Google’s Gemini.
iOS 27 appears poised to represent a significant leap forward for Apple in the world of artificial intelligence. The system relies on a completely new speech recognition model, offering highly useful tools. While the automatic subtitle generation feature for personal videos is being marketed as a tool to assist people with disabilities, it will be useful and practical for all users in various everyday situations.
The new speech recognition model is distinguished by its ability to process data locally within the iPhone, allowing it to add text not only to videos you record yourself, but also to videos sent by your friends or even content you watch online.
Most importantly, this text is generated entirely on-device without the need to upload any personal content or private videos to the cloud—a crucial security feature for protecting user privacy. Apple will also give users the ability to customize the appearance, type, and size of the subtitles, either from the video playlist or through the settings.
In its initial phase, the automatic translation feature will be limited to the United States and Canada and will support only English. Apple plans to expand support to other regions and languages in later stages of the system’s development.
The experimental devices that will support this feature include iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, and Vision Pro glasses, which will run the upcoming operating systems: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, tvOS 27, and visionOS 27, respectively.
Apple is expected to officially unveil these systems at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins this year on Monday, June 8.
